had done 25 Le Mans starts. So I had a couple of really good teachers who held my hand and helped me out. But once you get in the car then the job is the job you know. At the end of the day I know how to drive a race car fast. Then you just do what you have to do and get on with the job. You have to get your body used to it because in your head you’re thinking … okay let’s say seven-thirty is dinner time. But the way the race pans out, that might be in the middle of your quadruple stint. In which case, you need to do a carbo-load at five ‘o’ clock and get ready to get in the car at six. So there’s a lot of stuff that you need to be on top of all the time. You can’t really lose focus at all.
So how do you prepare for the race? When do you start preparing and how exactly do you go about preparing for something like this?
I think the big thing is to just save energy. It’s all about energy conservation in the build-up to the race because it’s such a long week. It’s very easy to be tired even before the race. Because you’re there… you’re honestly living in a camper van in the middle of nowhere for like a week. You just need to, as I said, save energy. This week, for example, it’s been a bit hectic. Because obviously we’ve done the Formula E test as well. That’s been quite a busy day. It was the first test so we had a lot of engineering meetings to try and understand the car. But then Thursday, Friday, Saturday, I’ve just literally been at home, done a bit of training and just chilled out you know.
The other thing about) Le Mans is you don’t have any time alone. You’re always surrounded by people, whether it’s your team-mates, or your engineers, or the media or the fans. The fans start coming in from Monday, Tuesday. So you don’t really get any alone time to just chill out, you know. I take my bike – I’ve found a nice little route through the French villages – and I spend every day -- Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday – probably all five days I’ll do an hour and a half or two hours of cycling. Just a little light training, 50/60 km so nothing too severe. I think that’s really important is to get some alone time, just keep your mind in balance.
And over the weekend, once the race gets underway, you’re doing lots of stints, you’re getting in the car out of the car. So how important is it to find a routine and how important is it to get a few naps in between your stints?
David (Brabham) gave me the best piece of advice back in 2012. It sounds a bit harsh but he said to me, ‘When you get out of the car, don’t care, stop caring.’ You can’t control what your team-mate is doing. You can’t control what the team is doing. So (keeping the) radio on or watching the timing screens is just going to give you stress for 24 hours and you’ll get burnt out.
So now when I get out of the car, I just go back to the camper van, I have a shower and I take a nap or I watch something on my iPad, just completely take my mind off the race. I don’t have the radio, I don’t have the timing screen on, I don’t do anything. I just shut down for three or four hours and try and convince my brain that I’m not at the racetrack. And because of that I’m able to sleep okay. I think I probably slept four, five hours in those two years.
That was what I was going to ask you. Can you sleep with all the adrenaline flowing?
Yeah, you wind down. As I say, it’s about telling your brain not to care. You’ve done your job. As long as you’ve done your job well, that’s all that matters, that’s all you can control.
Every year that you’ve competed in Le Mans you’ve had different team-mates. How important is it to form not just a good working relationship but also a good camaraderie with your team-mates? David?
It’s really important because obviously you’re spending a lot of time together and you have to get along. I think it really depends on the characters and where they’re coming from. The first year, I had a great time with Peter and David and they’re still really good friends. We’ve become really good family friends. I know their kids and everything. Last year again I had Brendon (Hartley) who’s again become a really good friend. I speak with him really often and we go karting together so that really helps. We’re genuinely friends. This year, it’s a little bit different. Okay I’ve known Rodolfo (Gonzalez) for a long time and actually even Nathanael (Berthon), I’ve known them separately for a long time. But they are coming at it very much from a single-seater mentality so they haven’t yet chilled out enough. Sportscar racing you do need to chill out a bit and you do need to be less competitive with each other. Of course we all want to be the fastest guy in the car. But at the same time what’s more important is to help each other. And don’t forget, Berthon is still racing in GP2 so he’s still coming at it from a little bit of a single-seater mentality. And same with Gonzo, you know. He’s not done any sportscar racing in his life before this year. But it’s getting better. And what’s good is I think they -- or I hope -- they both have huge respect for me and separately they’ve both been emailing me and calling me … and I’ve also been helping them out. So that whole situation is getting better.